Donald Elliott uses a maritime chart to show where he claims Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went down Friday, May 2, 2014, during an interview at his home in East Berne, N.Y. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)

Donald Elliott uses a maritime chart to show where he claims Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went down Friday, May 2, 2014, during an interview at his home in East Berne, N.Y. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)

Tracings made by Donald Elliott from satellite imagery on his computer he claims show the missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went down Friday, May 2, 2014, during an interview at his home in East Berne, N.Y. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union) less

Tracings made by Donald Elliott from satellite imagery on his computer he claims show the missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went down Friday, May 2, 2014, during an interview at his home in East Berne, N.Y. ... more

Donald Elliott working with computers and audio-visual equipment putting together videos and images of what he claims is the site where Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went down Friday, May 2, 2014, during an interview at his home in East Berne, N.Y. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union) less

Donald Elliott working with computers and audio-visual equipment putting together videos and images of what he claims is the site where Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went down Friday, May 2, 2014, during an ... more

Donald Elliott points to a satellite image of what he claims is the site he found where Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went down Friday, May 2, 2014, during an interview at his home in East Berne, N.Y. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union) less

Donald Elliott points to a satellite image of what he claims is the site he found where Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went down Friday, May 2, 2014, during an interview at his home in East Berne, N.Y. (John ... more

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images to claim he found dozens of surviving passengers in life jackets, floating on plane debris and being eaten sharks. (Satellite images via Tomnod.com courtesy of Donald Elliott) less

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images ... more

Image 8 of 17

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images to claim he found dozens of surviving passengers in life jackets, floating on plane debris and being eaten sharks. (Satellite images via Tomnod.com courtesy of Donald Elliott) less

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images ... more

Image 9 of 17

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images to claim he found dozens of surviving passengers in life jackets, floating on plane debris and being eaten sharks. (Satellite images via Tomnod.com courtesy of Donald Elliott) less

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images ... more

Image 10 of 17

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images to claim he found dozens of surviving passengers in life jackets, floating on plane debris and being eaten sharks. (Satellite images via Tomnod.com courtesy of Donald Elliott) less

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images ... more

Image 11 of 17

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images to claim he found dozens of surviving passengers in life jackets, floating on plane debris and being eaten sharks. (Satellite images via Tomnod.com courtesy of Donald Elliott) less

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images ... more

Image 12 of 17

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images to claim he found dozens of surviving passengers in life jackets, floating on plane debris and being eaten sharks. (Satellite images via Tomnod.com courtesy of Donald Elliott) less

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images ... more

Image 13 of 17

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images to claim he found dozens of surviving passengers in life jackets, floating on plane debris and being eaten sharks. (Satellite images via Tomnod.com courtesy of Donald Elliott) less

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images ... more

Image 14 of 17

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images to claim he found dozens of surviving passengers in life jackets, floating on plane debris and being eaten sharks. (Satellite images via Tomnod.com courtesy of Donald Elliott) less

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images ... more

Image 15 of 17

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images to claim he found dozens of surviving passengers in life jackets, floating on plane debris and being eaten sharks. (Satellite images via Tomnod.com courtesy of Donald Elliott) less

One of more than 11,000 satellite images Donald Elliott of East Berne analyzed and claimed to show the location of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 jet, missing since March 8. Elliott also used these images ... more

Donald Elliott with computers and audio-visual equipment he's using to put together videos and images of what he claims is the site he found where Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went down Friday, May 2, 2014, during an interview at his home in East Berne, N.Y. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union) less

Donald Elliott with computers and audio-visual equipment he's using to put together videos and images of what he claims is the site he found where Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went down Friday, May 2, 2014, ... more

Donald Elliott claims he located the lost Malaysia Airlines jet Flight MH370, along with dozens of passengers wearing life preservers or perched on pieces of the plane's interior who floated in the Indian Ocean for days until many of them were killed by sharks.

Before you dismiss the local commercial photographer and scuba diver as a crackpot, hear him out. We owe him that much after he's pored over more than 11,000 satellite images in obsessive, sleep-deprived, marathon scanning jags that kept him glued to an iPad, laptops and computer monitors over the past two months.

"It's frustrating because nobody will listen to me," said Elliott, 58, who lives along Warner Lake and is a son of the late prominent Albany plastic surgeon Dr. Ray Elliott.

"I don't care if people call me crazy," he said. "I was watching those people die, and I owe it to them to keep trying to convince the authorities that I'm right."

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Elliott exchanged emails with the partner of a missing Chinese passenger. "She encouraged me to keep pushing ahead because she believes there's been a cover-up," he said.

Last Friday, for more than an hour in his home studio, Elliott retrieved dozens of downloaded satellite images on his computer screen that he claimed were the sinking plane, passengers floating in the ocean, sharks attacking and passengers burning pieces of the plane as signal fires.

"Can't you see it? Right there! And there!" Elliott asked, his voice rising. "It's so obvious. As clear as you and I are sitting here, those are passengers. Can't you see the V of the life jacket? And there's one being eaten by a shark."

All I saw were vague white spots, blurry shapes without any clear detail. To my untrained eye, the pale blotches on the screen could have been a passing cloud or whitecaps or random atmospheric disturbance.

I could not see what Elliott said he saw, no matter how hard he tried to convince me.

He might as well have been trying to get me to see the shape of a unicorn in the clouds or the face of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich.

"Human vision is subjective, and we actually see what we want to see in many cases," said Siwei Lyu, professor of computer science at the University at Albany and an expert on digital image forensics.

"Humans have pattern recognition ability that is sometimes too good," he said. "If you stare long enough at the ceiling, you might find a face in the pattern of specks."

Elliott emailed Lyu satellite images, but the researcher was unconvinced. "From a scientific point of view, I don't have sufficient evidence to support what he was saying," Lyu said. The satellite images did not appear to have been tampered with, but they were low-resolution and inconclusive, Lyu said.

Elliott's obsession seemed colored by a traumatic scuba diving episode involving his son, Austin, 24, two years ago on a trip to Belize in Central America. Elliott stayed in the boat as his son and a guide dove down 100 feet to explore a reef and spear fish. The water was rough and swells pushed the boat off its mooring. Elliott lost visual contact with the divers' air bubbles and feared they were trapped under the reef as they neared the 45-minute capacity of air in their scuba tanks. Elliott panicked. He eventually spotted an inflatable emergency marker in the distance. As he reached his son and guide in the boat, he saw sharks circling a few feet away. Elliott grew very emotional as he described the memory.

Elliott believes the Boeing 777 carrying 239 passengers and crew sank in the Indian Ocean, 804 miles west and 105 miles north of Kuala Lumpur several thousand feet deep in an area known as 90 East Ridge. That site is thousands of miles north of where search teams reported spotting possible wreckage in the southern Indian Ocean, 1,500 miles off the western coast of Australia.

An exhaustive search for Flight MH370 over the past two months or so has failed to find the missing plane, which disappeared on March 8 shortly after it left Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing. The focus of the search has now shifted to the ocean floor after a massive aerial, surface and underwater search failed to locate the aircraft.

Elliott did not offer a theory as to why he claimed Flight MH370 made an intact belly landing and floated for an extended period before sinking. He alluded to dark conspiracies.

"It's not my job to speculate or investigate," he said. "It's my job to scan those images and to use my experience and visual skills."

Elliott used standard laptops and an iPad at his home in East Berne to analyze satellite images posted on a public website, Tomnod.com, by DigitalGlobe. He could not explain why he believes he found the plane and passengers when a massive, multinational search involving highly trained and specialized military and civilian experts and an unprecedented range of state-of-the-art resources came up empty-handed.

"All I can figure is that somebody didn't want those people found alive," Elliott said.

Elliott is not alone in his obsession. There are many conspiracy theorists who have posted videos and screeds focusing on a government plot, terrorist attack, pilot suicide and passenger sabotage. A survey done by the British tabloid the Daily Mail found that 1 in 10 Americans thought that space aliens were involved in the plane's disappearance.

In the early days of the search in March, more than 115,000 volunteers like Elliott joined an online crowd-sourcing search initiated by DigitalGlobe on tomnod.com, and volunteers posted more than 100 million page views in the first 34 hours.

Elliott was among the most zealous, and conceded that he inundated the Tomnod.com staff with so many emails that they eventually blocked him from the website and stopped responding to him.

Officials with DigitalGlobe declined to discuss Elliott's evidence. "The response to this campaign was phenomenal and we are hugely appreciative of the time, feedback and passion that everyone contributed to the Tomnod search," a spokeswoman told the Times Union. The Colorado company, which provides satellite images for numerous applications, has shut down its crowd-sourcing effort now that the search on the surface of the ocean has concluded.

Elliott understands that by going public he is setting himself to become an object of derision. "I don't care what anyone says about me," he said. "I saw the passengers dying, and I can't let that go. That plane is where I said it is, and one day they'll find it where I told them it is."

Elliott has taken his evidence to local law enforcement officials and the FBI. He posted a video presenting his findings on YouTube and Vimeo. So far, reaction has ranged from blank stares to outright scorn.

"He's nuts," an online commenter wrote after watching his video.

Others praised his passion and perseverance. "At least maybe the families will benefit from your hard work," one commenter wrote. "Continued best of luck in getting people to properly recognize your work," said another.